


what we call development

by orphan_account



Category: Free!
Genre: 5+1 Things, First Kiss, M/M, unintended concussions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2077203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sousuke really doesn’t know how to answer to this bursting, roaring-flame type of boy. (Alternately, five times Sousuke ended up carrying Momo, and one time it was the other way around.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	what we call development

**Author's Note:**

> i have a disease; it's called soumomo.   
>  > additional tags: disastrously fluffy + ambiguously requited rinharu + a small instance of vaguely nsfw content   
>  > man i have never written a fic so fast. it's probably hideously rushed, but the idea was too cute. hope you enjoy!

~

 

 

The first time Sousuke hoists Momotarou into his arms he’s surprised by how dead asleep he is, a messy tumble of long limbs and vivid hair tipping its entire weight into his left shoulder. It makes him grimace, since the whole point of the ice pack he’d just taken off was to relieve the stress from it, but it’s a lot more difficult to adjust a heavy, sleeping boy than it is to rearrange an ice pack.

He’s doing this for Rin, Sousuke tells himself. Rin will be back soon, ready to crash after another late-night coaching session with Iwatobi’s butterfly swimmer, and Momotarou sprawled across the bottom bunk would, ostensibly, get in the way of said crashing. He’s doing this because six consecutive attempts to rouse Momotarou had all failed, and he’d rather not put Aiichirou through the task of dragging someone larger than himself down the hall. He’s doing this so that he can go back to bed with last week’s English lecture filtering through his earbuds until he falls asleep.

Momotarou hangs over his shoulder like a limp doll. Sousuke feels like there should be a more dignified way of carrying him, but he hasn’t thought of one yet, and he’s at the door already.

He manages to fit them both through the door frame without scraping anything, at least, and then takes the necessary steps down to Aiichirou’s room. Two steady knocks are enough to bring Ai scrambling to the door, a look of surprise brightening his eyes.

“Yamazaki-senpai!” He squints a little. “What, um, happened? Is Mikoshiba-kun okay?”

“Asleep,” Sousuke tries to shrug before remembering that he can’t.

It’s only been, what, a minute, maybe a half? And his body has already adjusted to Momotarou’s weight, sharp elbows and surprisingly vicious knees and all. Ai nods, sighs, and tells him to leave him in the bottom bunk.

It doesn’t take too long for Momotarou to get settled in the bottom bunk, flopping onto the mattress with a quiet groan and rolling onto his stomach immediately, taking a good chunk of the covers with him. Sousuke watches him sleep for a few seconds.

“What was he doing in your room, senpai?” Ai asks, not bothering to keep his voice down, which Sousuke feels is strange. Ai’s usually a considerate person, quick to notice little things. Then again, he’s probably just as tired.

“He came over looking for Rin, and then didn’t leave.” Sousuke pauses for a moment, and then explains, “Rin’s helping the Iwatobi guy.”

“Oh! That’s right, this is the third night that’s been going on… I hope Rin-senpai isn’t too tired out from this. Anyway, sorry about Mikoshiba-kun. I’ll talk to him about barging into other rooms like this in the future.” Ai twists the edge of his sleeve, looking like it’s his fault that Momotarou had crashed in Sousuke’s room, which doesn’t make _any_ sense, so Sousuke shakes his head with a slight smile.

“It’s alright. He was surprisingly quiet.”

Momotarou makes another sound, something closer to a mewl, and shuffles his legs around in his sleep. Sousuke decides to let him be, heading back towards the door. “I’ll see you at practice, Aiichirou. Make sure he doesn’t wake up at three in the morning. You need a good night’s sleep as well.”

“A-ah! Right, good night, senpai!”

The door closes softly. Sousuke lingers for a moment, rubbing his shoulder; the sudden absence of Momotarou rushes blood back into his arm almost overwhelmingly, enough to make it warm as if in compensation. He’s thinking about another ice pack when he hears Ai’s voice, still loud enough to carry.

“I know you’re awake, Mikoshiba-kun. You never sleep on your stomach. Can you get into your own bed now?”

Wait, what?

“But it’s warm here,” comes Momotarou’s voice a moment later, lacking every bit of the expected fuzziness of sleep. “Almost as warm as Sousuke-senpai’s body… aaaaahhhh.”

Sousuke almost makes a movement to wrench open the door again. Instead he heads back to his own room, the warm, contented _aaaaahhhh_ following him all the way back to his upper bunk.

 

 

Like most kids, Sousuke started swimming because he loved playing in the pool. He loved the heavy weight of summer heat dispersing under the heavy weight of water and the clear blue splash of water against a clear blue sky. He even loved the various and often strangely scented sunblocks that his parents would buy, from coconut to sensual sea breeze to other vivid tastes that probably weren’t appropriate for a boy of seven to use.

He doesn’t remember when he made the switch from kid swimming lessons to competition, when his Saturday mornings became early drives to the indoor pool, when the loud smacks of bodies diving into the water echoed against high ceilings instead of sparkling with an outdoor sun. But he knows it’s been a while - a long time, actually, since he’s viewed the pool as a place to do anything other than swim laps or pull down his times.

The ocean is a little different from an outdoor pool, but for all intents and purposes it feels similar enough: sea sprazy under an open sky, lazy couples lounging along the water but not in it, bright towels splayed out in the sand. Momotarou has a vividly yellow towel today, big enough to wrap himself in completely. He leaps and yells and flashes in the sunlight like bright copper, maybe even brighter than that, skipping his fists like a rock through the waves and aiming a splash at Aiichirou, who shrieks and splashes back.

They came here with Rin, at first, the four of them eager and damp on the summer train, throats dry for want of the beach, but then Rin caught sight of Nanase and Tachibana and who Sousuke assumed were Tachibana’s siblings and left to go say hello. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he told Sousuke. “Don’t let Momo wander off too much.”

Sousuke flips open a book ( “Are you _serious_ ,” Rin asked incredulously, “are you a grandpa? Put down the goddamn book, Sousuke, and try to act a little more alive in front of the kids.” “The kids,” Sousuke repeated. Rin jerked his thumb towards the deep blue water, where Momo and Ai were yelling like two five year olds. “The kids,” he affirmed, and spun on his heel, walking with what was definitely a swagger towards Nanase). He doesn’t remember a lot about having fun at the beach, now that he’s actually here. It’s been at least twenty minutes now and Rin is nowhere in sight; he’s thinking about braving Nanase’s infuriatingly blank stare and dragging Rin back to his own team when, like a siren, he hears Momotarou’s yell.

“...pai, SEN-pai, SEN-pai, HEY, SOUsuke-SEN-pai!”

“What, Momotarou,” he calls back.

“Come here, come here!”

Sousuke doesn’t mean to squint, or be suspicious, but he squints suspiciously into the distance. Ai’s there, at least. He stands, lets the book fall shut onto the towel (Momo’s towel, actually, which he’s been using since Momo accidentally threw his into the water and basically destroyed the point of a towel), and walks over, stopping knee-deep in the waves. “What,” he repeats.

“GOT YOU,” Momo screams, delighted, and takes a flying leap towards him before he can even think to react, catching his long legs around Sousuke’s waist and knocking him into the water. “HAHAHA, I can’t believe you fell for that! You literally fell for it, senpai, haha!”

Even Aiichirou’s laughing now, Sousuke notices as he coughs, swiping his hand over his eyes to get the water out completely. Momotarou’s grinning face swims into focus.

“Momotarou,” Sousuke rasps.

“Yeah, senpai?” Momo’s golden eyes widen slightly. “Oh yeah, are you okay? Rin-senpai told us to, uh, liven you up a little if you start acting like a grandpa, so -”

“Momotarou, come with me.”

He walks with Momo deeper into the water, his face serious, while Momo follows like a drenched cat, slinking as best as he can through the buoyed current. When they’re almost chest deep, Sousuke turns to him.

“I’m, um, sorry, se- WAIT, WAIT NO, PUT ME DOWN, SOUSUKE-SENPAI WAIT -” Momo’s yells turn into a gurgling as Sousuke heaves him up onto his shoulder, waits for a second, and then tosses him into the water, not hard enough to hurt but enough to warrant a split-second panic. Momo surfaces after three seconds, unharmed but sputtering, “Senpai that was _mean_.”

Sousuke smiles. “No,” he tells Momo. “It was _fair_. It’s an elderly concept that you teenagers wouldn’t understand.”

He’s gratified by the way Momo drops his gaze, water making his hair stick flat to his head. “Yes, Sousuke-senpai.”

 

 

It isn’t surprising, then, that Momo tips over on the train back to Samezuka, his eyes falling shut and his mouth falling open, his body tilted back to rest against the seat. Sousuke refuses to let himself look too much after the time in his room, knowing that Momo is good at playing asleep.

That’s not the only reason he refuses to let himself look, but Sousuke ignores the other reasons. He stares, absently, at Momo’s chin instead of his lips, at his ear instead of the soft sweep of his eyelashes, at his fingers instead of the well-developed muscles of his arms. If he doesn’t look too much, then Momo won’t be able to tell - or, at least, that’s what he tells himself as he gives up, his gaze shifting constantly between Momo and Rin and Ai, all three of them washed rose-gold in the dwindling afternoon.

“Should we wake him up?” Rin asks as they near Samezuka.

“Nah, he’s not asleep,” Sousuke decides. Momo snores convincingly, which makes him almost laugh and shake his shoulder anyway. “Hey, Momotarou.”

“Neajweijgh,” says Momo, opening his eyes, rubbing at them blearily.

Sousuke’s voice mysteriously disappears for a few seconds. When he finds it again (lingering, shamefully, in the pit of his stomach), Momo is talking sleepily to Rin and Aiichirou.

“Ai-senpai can I sleep in your bunk tonight I’m too tired to climb up,” he gets out between large, elastic yawns.

“Why don’t you get Sousuke-senpai to throw you up there,” Ai suggests, the lift of his eyebrows almost wicked. It’s enough to fill Sousuke with regret at not throwing Ai into the water, either.

“What,” Rin interjects. “I thought you spent the afternoon -”

“Indulging in elderly activities like reading? Or keeping an eye on you and your lame attempts at going after Nanase?” Sousuke shakes his head. Teenagers. “I’m not _that_ old, Rin.”

“You’re like two hundred years old. And they were not _lame_ , at least now Haru knows I’m good with kids.”

“He wasn’t even looking at you,” Sousuke points out.

“He said ‘Thanks, Rin’ when Makoto came back from the bathroom.”

“I didn’t know expressing thanks were synonymous to confessions of love.”

“Why were you manhandling my backstroke swimmer in the ocean? Is that an expression of love?”

“ _I was not_ ,” Sousuke hisses as the train pulls to a stop. “Momo’s right there.”

“ _Momo_ is asleep again,” Rin says, smirk firmly in place. “I didn’t know you called him _Momo_.”

Sousuke knows he shouldn’t blush, kind of like how he knew he shouldn’t have listened earlier when Momo told him to “come here”. But he does anyway, red flaring up along his cheeks and forehead, which makes Rin laugh - which, Sousuke supposes, isn’t too bad, considering Rin resembled something like a nutcracker when he came back from saying hello to Nanase.

“Should we, uh, take Momo-kun?” Aiichirou pipes up.

Rin and Sousuke trade glances. Sousuke considers offering to have a throwdown, but decides against it. “I’ll get him.” He does not, absolutely, let his eyes linger on the pane of sunlight sharp against Momo’s cheek, or resist the urge to rest his fingers there to see if they would catch the light the same way. “Help me get him up, will you?”

“Sure.” Rin’s still smirking.

There is no meaning at all in how Momo’s weight is now familiar, almost comforting on its heavy warmth, none at all. Sousuke secures his arms under Momo’s thighs and lets Rin drape Momo’s arms over his shoulders and arrange Momo’s chin to dig, uncomfortably, into the dip between neck and shoulder. Ai’s fumbling in his pocket for something as they step off the train.

“No pictures,” Sousuke mutters.

Ai’s fumbling stops. His lower lip starts introducing itself as a main character on his face.

“... alright, one picture,” Sousuke concedes. Momo nuzzles his neck.

“Sousuke-senpai,” he says, voice scratchy, docile. “Thanks, Sousuke-senpai.”

“When will you learn to stop tiring yourself out so fast, Momotarou?” Sousuke asks in return, as Ai snaps a picture on his phone. Momo doesn’t reply, but he closes his mouth and stays silent for the walk back to the dorms, and it takes until Sousuke is freshly showered later that night to realize that that was Momo’s way of saying “I’ll try harder from now, Sousuke-senpai.”

 

 

“Hey, Sousuke-senpai.”

Sousuke feels a little like he’s dreaming. The feeling is exacerbated by the constant, rhythmic echoes of water lapping against concrete, a whistle being blown, three and four syllable surnames being barked out, fading into the high ceiling lights. And here’s Momo’s voice, hesitant and shy in front of him, directed not in his face but slightly below his right ear.

“Yeah?”

“Can you help me with something?”

He’s definitely dreaming. Definitely. Momotarou Mikoshiba, asking for help like this? Last time he wanted help with something, he’d just dragged Sousuke over to his end of the pool and demanded it. Momo bites at his lower lip, which Sousuke realizes is a little swollen, like he’s been biting it for a while. He takes pity. “Sure. What do you need?”

“Can you help me with my stroke,” Momo blurts out. To Sousuke’s credit, he does not let his eyes flicker downwards. “I want to improve the speed of my stroke and, uh, Rin-senpai’s busy, so -”

“Let’s go, then,” Sousuke cuts in. “It’s fine, Momo.”

“Huh?”

“I said, it’s fine.” He drags the end of his sentence down. Not up, down. There are too many question marks in this conversation for Sousuke to add one of his own.

“No, no, uh, I mean -” Momo swallows, and it’s probably because Sousuke is dreaming, but the flex of his throat is smooth and slow, not rushed like the kid usually is. It’s almost hard not to stare, but Sousuke’s always been good at doing hard things. When Momo starts to smile, huge and ear-splitting and blinding, Sousuke lights a match underneath his massive block of logical thoughts and watches in satisfaction as they go up in a blaze. “You, I mean, Sousuke-senpai, called me Momo?”

Sousuke knows he did good saving that question mark. He hooks it around the tension between them and drags it away like a curtain, inhaling the sudden lightness. “Of course I did. So, your stroke?”

“Yeah! So I had a few ideas that I ran by Ai-senpai, except he says he’s not a good authority and I should ask Rin-senpai, who told me to ask Ai-senpai again because he was on the phone with someone and to come back and see him later -” Momo’s words trail off into a vague hum of noise as he follows Sousuke to the benches, bright and eager as he always is.

“Sure. Put your hands up in the air for me, Momo,” says Sousuke, who’s learned, through repeated and prolonged exposure, when to filter out Momo’s chatter and when to pay attention. He’s almost got it right. Momo listens immediately, hands shooting up towards the ceiling, and Sousuke takes the opportunity to press his thumbs along either side of his spine, and then to test his shoulders. “Looks good. Drop.”

Momo’s arms fall flat at his sides. Sousuke cups his palms on his shoulders and regrets it instantly when he feels the heat of Momo’s skin seeping into his hand. He clears his throat and works on the right arm, bringing it up and back.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he says, although half the words get stuck on the way out. Momo nods, wide-eyed as Sousuke starts moving his arm slowly.

“Stop,” Momo says about three seconds later, his voice hoarse. Sousuke nods this time and walks over to his other side, each step feeling like it takes an hour. Momo’s eyes follow him carefully, pupils shrunk to slits, leaving almost nothing but pure gold, glimmering under the harsh light. Another mistake, then - but walking around his back would have been worse, an opportunity to see, unchecked, the smooth jut of shoulder blades and the slender taper of his waist. “Sousuke-senpai?”

Sousuke blinks and realizes he’s been frowning heavily. He readjusts his expression. “Sorry. Stuff on my mind. Same deal with this arm, alright?”

“Yeah. Hey - if this isn’t - if you’re busy, you don’t have to…”

“I want to,” Sousuke tells him honestly. “Don’t worry. Relax your back, you’re going to hurt yourself swimming like that.”

When Sousuke lets go this time, neither of them are breathing.

Momo’s the first one to speak. His voice laces itself with the kind of hope that is painful to hear, weaving in and out of Sousuke’s ribs and wrapping up in elegant knots around his insides. Momo has fingers that are a little clumsy, sometimes, fumbling with a bottle of shampoo as he tries to uncap it, dropping his swimming goggles on the floor. But with a thread of hope Momo is a genius, a speedy stitch, nimble needle, prickling precise points along each of Sousuke’s weak spots and pulling until he feels the knot at the other end.

“So, pool?”

Sousuke doesn’t bother clearing his throat, but it still surprises himself when his voice sounds lost. “Yeah.”

He lets Momo float in the water, hand at his back, counting his breaths, timing the evenness of each exhale. Tells Momo he needs to feel each breath through his spine, in and out, tense and relax, coil and spring. No shoulder breathing. He adds another hand, pressed into Momo’s chest, feeling his lung cavity expand and contract.

Momo’s eyes dart from ceiling light to ceiling light. Sousuke doesn’t blame him.

“Relax. Now, slowly, arms.”

Sousuke watches as one of Momo’s arms lifts out of the water, pulls back in a graceful arc, dips under. “Don’t turn your wrist so quickly. Watch the angle of your hand. Keep your shoulders as relaxed as possible.”

If Momo’s “Yes, senpai” sounds out of breath, Sousuke pretends not to notice. Momo’s arms keep cycling, evenly, the turn of his wrist careful, and Sousuke finds himself drifting, Momo’s body sandwiched between his hands, Momo’s chest rising and falling under his palm, warm through the coolness of the water, Momo’s mouth parted in rhythmic breaths -

“We’ll work on this tomorrow, too,” Sousuke hears himself saying. “That’s good for today. Try to keep it in mind for the rest of practice.”

He doesn’t move his hands as Momo flips upright in the water, and it feels, alarmingly, like he’s the one keeping Momo afloat. When he finally lets go, Momo’s eyelids flutter behind the yellow-tinted goggles.

“Thank you, senpai,” he says, and surges up to wrap all four limbs around him like a koala and plant a kiss on Sousuke’s cheek before darting away. “Bye!”

 

 

Momo doesn’t do it again the next day. Sousuke does his best to keep things clinical, offering far more suggestions than Momo needs for fear that a pause would steal his voice away again, or steer the conversation towards something other than backstroke technique. He talks more than he ever remembers talking in his life, even compared to his time at Sano SC. He talks about breathing and currents and concentration and kick, talks about the turn, talks about elbows.

At the same time, he notices Momo’s breathing and the gentle tapping of waves against his body and the focus of his eyes, notices Momo’s kick, watches his turn, keeps an eye on those sharp elbows. It’s, he tells himself all the time, for Momo’s own good.

“Or maybe _your_ own good,” Rin grins at him in the showers.

“I learn from other people who watch others swim nonstop,” Sousuke says half-heartedly, because his mind is still on the ribbon-like motion of Momo’s legs in the water.

He coaches Momo throughout the week anyway, earning nothing except for the energetic “Thank you, senpai!” and maybe an extra-shiny smile, and manages to make his underused voice work overtime. By the time Saturday rolls around he’s exhausted, opting out of a morning jog with Rin in favor of pulling his covers over his head, ignoring Rin’s occasional jibes about jogging with Nanase instead. It’s a steaming morning with the curtains pulled back, but he doesn’t want to get out of bed - damn Rin and his bottom bunk - instead sweltering under his covers and trying to pretend that closing his eyes will somehow get the aircon to turn on.

He thinks about Momo with his eyes closed, thinks about how he clings to him like a little monkey, thinks about his bright, golden smile and his laugh that reaches everywhere, thinks about the pretty pink of his lips and the litheness of his body -

 _Fuck_ , Sousuke is hard, hard in a way he hasn’t let himself get for the past two weeks, ever since that trip to the beach. He’s angry at himself now, for even considering, for even thinking about considering, the feeling of Momo’s pliant mouth on his own, or the softness of his skin against his teeth. His hips jerk against the mattress, unbidden, edging a soft, helpless groan from his lips.

No, _no_ , is what Sousuke tells himself. No.

(No, he repeats to himself later, sweating and flushed and furious with himself in the bathroom with tissues bunched in his hand, _no_.)

 

 

Rin lets him sulk over homework for most of Saturday (most, Sousuke thinks disgustedly, because a good portion of Saturday was spent with the image of Momo’s mouth and hips and legs seared into the backs of his eyelids, ready to startle him whenever he blinked, in dark flashes), but on Sunday drags him and their two underclassmen out to the park for a friendly game of basketball.

“You and Momo against me and Ai,” Rin declares. His smile sharpens over the edge of competition. “Everyone’s familiar with the rules, right?”

Momo tips into his space, eager, too willing. “Of course! We're gonna beat the crap out of you, Rin-senpai, Ai-senpai!”

But as it turns out, Momo doesn't actually play basketball. Neither does Ai, at least, so the game quickly becomes a one on one with Sousuke and Rin, neither of them able to gain more than three points on the other. Sousuke sinks a three-pointer and catches, out of the corner of his eye, Ai and Momo whispering together, their heads gleaming under the daylight.

“Oi,” he calls out. “Weren't you keeping score for us?”

“You're already doing that by yourself,” Ai points out.

“You could help is practice shooting!” Momo exclaims, leaping onto the court. “Hey, isn't that a great idea, Ai-senpai? Isn't it? Oniichan’s gonna be so impressed if I go home able to dunk! All his friends play basketball, back home, and they never let me join -”

“You wanna learn how to dunk?” Rin asks. Sousuke senses his words a split second before he utters them, but even so, he doesn't make a move to object when Rin continues, "Sousuke can teach you."

"E-eh... but I want Rin-senpai to teach me," Momo says. “I can't make Sousuke-senpai do EVERYTHING for me, that's not fair.” He quiets down suddenly; Sousuke catches Ai giving him an anxious look.

No, Sousuke reminds himself, but he looks at Momo at the same time, taking in the strong lines of his arms and thinking, _he isn’t weak_. After all, it isn’t like Momo hasn’t lit a fuse under his entire method of being and basically blown it to pieces. So, Sousuke can tell himself _no_ all he wants, but in the end, it’s still himself deciding to say to Rin, “Give me the ball.”

Momo looks delighted as Sousuke runs the ball down the court, leaps, and dunks it through the hoop, however inexpertly. When Sousuke turns back to face them he’s breathing hard.

“That was _amazing_ ,” and, oh, Momo has the smile on again, like _he’s_ the one out of breath, filled with wonder, “I want to do it _exactly_ like that.”

Sousuke entertains a vision of Momo flying through the air, catching sunlight against his body. “Yeah?” he asks, his voice coming out several pitches lower than it was supposed to.

“Exactly,” Momo affirms, “like Sousuke-senpai.”

“I can’t guarantee an exact replica,” Sousuke’s forced to admit, but it doesn’t matter, because Momo bulldozes through his reply:

“I just want to feel like I’m flying, the same way you were.”

Oh. Sousuke’s never imagined it as flying, more like a way to get the ball through the basket, but Momo’s always been good at giving him ideas and tipping his preconceived ones over a cliff. Distantly Sousuke realizes that Rin and Ai have abandoned the court. He doesn’t care. He beckons Momo over and hands him the ball.

“Try.”

“ _Now_?”

“You’ll make it,” Sousuke tells him, because he will. “Trust me.”

“Senpai,” Momo says after a few seconds of gaping. “I can’t even _shoot_ when I’m directly in front of the basket.”

“Trust me,” Sousuke repeats.

Momo takes the ball and bounces it a few times before slow-jogging it down the court. Sousuke follows him. It’s true that, in normal circumstances, this kind of speed would never give him the momentum needed to jump high enough to dunk the ball. But Momo isn’t by himself this time, so as he leaps up, already half-hearted, Sousuke catches him around the thighs and jumps with him, the two of them bursting towards the hoop. Momo raises his hands high, prepared to slam the ball in, and Sousuke hears him take a deep breath.

 

 

“You are such a _dumbass_ ,” Rin tells him an hour later. “You gave him a _concussion_?”

“That obviously wasn’t my goal,” Sousuke snaps. “I didn’t know that was coming. I didn’t lift him up _that high_ , but he went and smacked his face into the goal hoop.”

“So,” and Rin crosses his arms, leaning back in his chair. “Then what happened?”

“Then I -” Rin leans forward again, and it feels like he’s pushed the breath out of Sousuke. Everything about those ten or so minutes continues to spin in tight, dizzying circles around him. He wants, mostly, to see if Momo is okay and then sleep forever. “I kind of worried a little. So I applied pressure to the wound and tried to stop the bleeding and kissed him.”

“You what,” Rin clarifies, like he’s intent on making Sousuke relive every single disastrous bit of what came after the leap. The fall. The blood. The unintentional yelling..

“I kissed him, okay. I’m not proud of it. It was a shitty thing to do, so I’m just going to let him recover first before I try to talk to him about it -”

“Sousuke-senpai?”

Sousuke jerks up to see Momo in the doorway, ghostlike, still in his basketball shorts with gauze wrapped around his head. He sways woozily against the door frame. Rin gets up to wrangle him into his bed, where he splays out like a starfish, kicking his feet into Sousuke’s spot on the mattress.

“What is it, Momo?”

“Can I say something?”

 _Can I_. Sousuke shoots a glare at Rin that means _get out_. Rin, after his eyebrow spends a comforting amount of time floating upwards, does so.

“Sure, Momo.” He’s trying to keep his voice soothing, he really is, but Momo is right _there_ , his eyes half-shut, it makes Sousuke feel even worse. “You don’t have to ask for permission.”

“Come closer,” Momo breathes.

Sousuke leans in, trying to stop his heartbeat completely before he gets there. It doesn’t work. He’s close enough to feel Momo’s breath on his nose, hot rushes of air blowing in his face. He’s close enough to lean down again and kiss him, again - not even close _enough_ , just _close_. When he whispers, “Like this?” the sound is almost nonexistent.

“Yeah,” says Momo. “I’m really glad you taught me how to dunk today, senpai.” He blinks slowly, eyelids dragging through honeyed layers of sleepiness. “And I’m really glad you kissed me today, too.”

He can say a lot of things then. Sousuke wants to say a lot of things. He wants to say: _I’m glad, too_ , but it isn’t enough; he wants to tell Momo how completely crazy his life’s become because of one completely crazy kid, but it’s too much; he wants to tell Momo to take care of himself, for once, but it’s not the right time to do so, not when Momo looks so genuinely happy with a bleeding head wound and a concussion, probably half-dazed with pain meds, and still managing to convey every last ounce of joy.

Sousuke wants to ask instead, _are you drunk_? but the answer to that question is no, actually, he’s concussed. Momo smiles at him dazedly and closes his eyes, looking so sweet that Sousuke doesn’t question it anymore when he does lean down, gently, pressing their lips together.

 

 

Rin cancels another park excursion the next weekend with a scowl when he wakes up to see Sousuke and Momo curled up in a giant, unnecessarily blanketed lump on the top bunk.

“A text,” he says, before swearing several times in English, “who the fuck texts at six in the morning on a _Saturday_? Haru, that’s who. ‘Makoto and his parents are taking me to get fitted for tuxes. Makoto wants to know if you can watch the twins again. Thanks Rin.’ What the _hell_?”

“What,” mumbles Sousuke sleepily into Momo’s hair. “Calm down, Rin. He’s texting you, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but Haru never has his phone on him,” says Rin, before stopping short. “Wait.” He taps furiously at his phone screen, even though it’s shut off. “ _Wait_.”

“Have fun, Rin,” Sousuke tells him, the sounds muffled. Rin leaves with a huff. Against him, Momo stirs. “Hey. Morning.”

“Morning,” Momo tells him happily, forehead pushed against his chest. “I had a really funny dream.”

“Hm? About what?”

“You know how you carry me around a lot?”

“Yeah?”

“In my dream it was totally the other way around. I was so strong, I could carry you everywhere.”

“Huh,” Sousuke replies. He pokes Momo’s face. “You want to try that?”

“But I want to lie in bed until I wake up.”

Sousuke kicks all the covers away. “No, too late. It was your idea.”

“It was my _dream_.”

“Exactly.”

Momo leaps down onto the floor with more balance than someone who is supposedly not awake; Sousuke follows suit. They start laughing when Momo wraps his arms around Sousuke’s middle, the same way he always does, except this time he pauses to press his face into Sousuke’s shirt. Sousuke can feel Momo’s nose, pointy, through the thin cotton. Momo tilts his face up to look at him. “Okay, ready?”

“Go ahead.”

Momo yanks him off the ground - Sousuke feels his feet leave the floor for about a second - before toppling backwards, crashing them into the floorboards.

“Jesus,” Sousuke lets out, “you okay, Momo?”

There’s silence. Momo’s eyes are shut, his breathing angelically still. Sousuke experiences a momentary panic.

“Momo?”

“Got you again,” Momo yells gleefully, startling up and rolling them over and dropping kisses all over Sousuke’s face. “Hey, senpai, don’t be mad, senpai! I’m okay, I’m sorry, okay?”

Sousuke really doesn’t know how to answer to this bursting, roaring-flame type of boy. Instead he loops his arms around Momo neck and pulls him in for a proper kiss, not caring that he was lying on the floor. He kisses Momo nice and slow, taking his time to feel the softness of his mouth, the easy way it opens for him. When Momo makes a soft whine in the back of his throat he draws back, smiling. Momo is smiling too, before he drapes himself over Sousuke’s left shoulder and the familiar, familiar warm weight settles.

“Does that mean it’s okay, now?” Momo whispers into his ear.

Sousuke’s hand comes up to tangle into Momo’s bright, bright hair. “It’s always been okay,” is what he says.

 

 

 


End file.
